Chapter 9: Rain and Revelation
The rain was a fine, persistent mist when they met at the West Gate, the kind that soaked through your clothes before you even noticed it was falling. The Botanics sprawled before them, a hundred shades of green made deeper by the damp, paths dark and shiny.
“You picked a dry day for it,” Roz said, pulling her collar up. She had a practical anorak, but her jeans were already dark at the ankles.
“It’s Scotland,” Ally shrugged, a smile playing on his lips. He wore a dark green waxed jacket, hands shoved in the pockets. “This is dry. Come on, I know a route that’s mostly under the trees.”
They fell into step, the rhythm easy. The gardens were quiet, just the distant hum of the city and the soft drip-drip from the canopy above. For a while, they talked about nothing consequential—a terrible film they’d both seen, the peculiar smell of the Palm House, the merits of different types of biscuit. It was the easy continuation of the pub, a conversation that didn’t need to be forced.
But the silence that settled between topics felt different today. Heavier.
They paused by the pond, watching the rain dimple the
Heavier.
They paused by the pond, watching the rain dimple the grey water. A sudden, cold gust whipped through the trees, shaking a torrent of droplets from the branches and onto their heads. Roz flinched, laughing a little too sharply as she wiped her face.
“Right, that’s it,” Ally said, gently steering her by the elbow toward the shelter of a giant sequoia. Its massive trunk offered a dry circle of earth, a quiet pocket away from the weather. He leaned against the rough bark, watching her. “You’ve been quiet.”
“Just thinking,” she said, her eyes fixed on the path. “About the other night. In the club. I’m not usually that… clumsy.”
“I’m glad you were.” His voice was soft. A silence stretched, filled only by the patter above. Then he shifted, turning to face her fully. “Can I ask you something? Why do you want to be a doctor?”
The question, so direct and unexpected, landed like a physical touch. Roz’s breath hitched. She wrapped her arms around herself, her gaze dropping to the moss between her boots. “My dad was ill,” she said, the words barely audible. “For a long time.”
She stopped, swallowing hard. The clinical summary she’d rehearsed for interviews—inspired by palliative care, a desire to help—turned to ash in her mouth. “I was twelve when he was diagnosed. Fourteen when he died. Motor neurone disease.”
The rain seemed to grow louder. “I watched everything get taken from him. His voice, his movement, his dignity. The doctors were… kind, but they were just managers of the decline. They had all this knowledge, all this power, and it meant nothing.” Her voice gained a raw, fractured edge. “I remember thinking, if I knew what they knew, if I understood it all perfectly, I could have fixed it. I could have saved him.”
She finally looked up at him, her blue eyes glistening. “It’s stupid, I know. Childish. But that’s the engine. Everything since—every textbook, every all-nighter, every time I stay late to check a chart—it’s just me trying to outrun that feeling of helplessness.” A single, hot tear escaped, tracing a path through the mist on her cheek. “So I have to be perfect. I have to know everything. Because if I don’t, people die.”
Ally didn’t move to hug her. He just listened, his expression stripped of all its usual easy charm, leaving something profoundly attentive and still. The wind died down for a moment.
“That’s not stupid,” he said quietly. “That’s the least stupid thing I’ve ever heard.” He pushed off from the tree and took a half-step closer, his hand rising slowly, giving her every chance to pull away. His thumb gently caught the tear on her cheek. “But, Roz? You can’t outrun it. That feeling. It just gets into the car with you.”
His words dismantled something inside her. The rigid posture she’d held for years seemed to soften, her shoulders dropping an inch. She leaned, almost imperceptibly, into his touch. “What do you do with it, then?”
“You learn to drive anyway,” he said, his hand lingering for a second before falling back to his side. He offered a small, tired smile. “And sometimes you let someone else navigate for a bit.” The rain was easing, the mist lifting to reveal the ghostly outline of the glasshouses through the trees. “Come on. Let’s get a terrible coffee from the kiosk. My treat.”
He held out his hand, not to pull her, just an open offer. After a heartbeat, Roz slid her cold fingers into his warm, calloused palm.
His hand closed around hers, a solid, uncomplicated warmth that seemed to travel straight up her arm. They walked like thath for a while, not toward the kiosk, but on a meandering path deeper into the dripping greenery. The contact was both a lifeline and a question.
Her mind was scraped raw, the confession hanging in the air between them like the mist. The weight of his silence wasn’t judgment, though. It felt like absorption. He’d taken the story, her cracked-open heart, and simply held it without flinching. The sheer relief of it made her legs feel unsteady.
“Thanks, Ally,” she said, her voice still thick. She gestured vaguely at her own face, at the damp tracks on her cheeks. “Sorry for… all the wet eyes.”
He stopped walking, turning to face her. His other hand came up, cradling the side of her face, his thumb smoothing over her cheekbone. “Don’t be sorry,” he said, his tone leaving no room for argument. “Don’t ever be sorry for crying.”
He let his hand fall, but the warmth of it seemed to linger on her skin. They walked again, her hand still in his, the path leading them out of the dense trees toward a small, steamed-over kiosk near the main gate.
“Two coffees, please,” Ally said to the vendor, then glanced at Roz’s pinched, pale face. He turned back. “Actually, scratch that. Two hot chocolates, with all the marshmallows they’ve got.” He smiled at her. “Come on, sweetheart. Sugar’s what you need.”
Roz’s tummy flipped at the unexpected endearment, a warm, fizzy sensation that had nothing to do with the promised drink. They waited in a comfortable silence, the earlier rawness settling into something softer between them. When he took the two steaming cups, he handed her one and then, without ceremony, slipped his arm around her shoulders, drawing her in against his side as they walked away from the kiosk.
“Is this okay?” he whispered into her hair, his voice a low rumble she felt through his jacket.
She nodded, her cheek brushing the damp waxed cotton. “Yeah. It’s… really okay.”
They found a relatively dry bench overlooking the slumbering winter flower beds. She took a sip, the sweet, rich heat spreading through her chest. “You were right. This is better.”
“Told you,” he said, nudging her gently with his shoulder. He was quiet for a moment, watching the steam curl off his drink. “My mum died when I was seventeen. Breast cancer. It was… fast. Brutally fast.”
Roz went very still, her cup held tightly in both hands. This wasn’t a bid for sympathy; his tone was flat, factual.
“I was playing a school match the day she went into hospice. Scored a hat-trick. Everyone was clapping me on the back, my dad was beaming.” Ally took a long swallow. “I felt like I was made of glass. I thought if anyone touched me too hard, I’d just shatter into a million pieces and they’d all see there was nothing inside. Just… quiet.”
He looked at her then, and the vulnerability in his eyes mirrored her own from under the sequoia. “So I get the engine thing. I really do. For me, rugby became the thing that kept the glass from cracking. All that sanctioned violence, the noise, the crowd… it drowned out the quiet.”
Roz absorbed this, the pieces of him rearranging into a sharper, more profound picture. The charismatic player was real, but he was also a decoy. “What do you read?” she asked softly. “When it gets too loud after all?”
A genuine, surprised laugh escaped him. “How did you—?”
“You said you liked English. History. In the pub.”
He looked genuinely touched that she’d remembered. “Poetry, mostly. The bleak stuff. Larkin. Sometimes Heaney.” He shrugged, a little self-conscious. “It’s like a pressure valve. Lets the quiet out in a controlled way, so it doesn’t explode on the pitch.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes, sipping their drinks, shoulders pressed together. The simple contact was a conversation in itself.
“My last clinical assessment is on Friday,” Roz said eventually. “Trauma scenario. I’m terrified I’ll freeze.”
“You won’t.” He said it with such absolute certainty she almost believed him.
“You can’t know that.”
“I’ve seen you with the team. You watch everything. You don’t miss details.” He turned to face her more fully, his arm still around her. “The quiet ones see the cracks in everything. That’s your superpower.”
She wanted to argue, to deflect, but the conviction in his gaze held her. Instead, she asked, “What’s your terror?”
“The Italy match next week.” The answer came instantly. “First Six Nations start. If my knee goes, or I make a stupid error, it’s not just me I let down. It’s… everyone.” He gave a wry smile. “The weight of the thistle and all that.”
“Your knee is fine,” she said, her medical voice clicking in automatically. “The scans were perfect. Your proprioception is better than it was pre-injury.”
“See?” He grinned, that charismatic flash returning. “Details. You’re already in doctor mode.” His smile softened. “Will you be there? On the medical team for the match?”
“If I pass my assessment on Friday.”
“You’ll pass.” He said it as if it were a foregone conclusion, a fact of the universe. He finished his hot chocolate and stood, offering her his hand again. “Walk you back? I’ve got a brutal training session in the morning. Coach will have my guts if I’m lagging.”
She took his hand, the simple action feeling monumental now. As they walked toward the gate, the city lights beginning to glow in the early dusk, he kept her close. The quiet between them wasn’t empty anymore; it was full of shared confessions, of engines and pressure valves, of silent understandings that promised this was only a beginning.
The quiet between them wasn’t empty anymore; it was full of shared confessions, of engines and pressure valves, of silent understandings that promised this was only a beginning. They reached her street, the tenement buildings dark and imposing against the slate-grey sky. A single, weak streetlight flickered overhead, casting their linked shadows long and thin across the wet pavement.
He walked her right to her close mouth, the shared entrance to the flats. The rain had started again, a fine, cold drizzle that caught in their hair. “Here,” she said, her voice a little unsteady. She turned to face him, their hands still connected. “Thanks for the walk. And the hot chocolate. And… everything else.”
“Anytime,” he said, his thumb stroking the back of her hand. He didn’t let go. “Friday, then. Your assessment.”
“Friday.” She nodded, a nervous flutter in her stomach that had nothing to do with exams. He was standing so close she could see the flecks of grey in his green eyes, the damp curl of his hair against his forehead. The air between them crackled, charged with all the things they’d said and all the things they hadn’t.
Ally’s gaze dropped to her mouth, then back to her eyes. A question hung there. He leaned in, just a fraction, and Roz’s breath hitched. This was it. This was the moment. But then he stopped, a frustrated, almost pained smile touching his lips. He gave her hand a final, firm squeeze and took a deliberate step back, breaking the contact.
“I can’t,” he said, the words rough. “Not while you’re still on placement. It’s not… it wouldn’t be right.” He shoved his hands back into his jacket pockets, as if physically restraining himself. “The SRU has rules about this stuff. Fraternization. You could get struck off the rotation, or worse.”
Roz felt the rejection like a physical chill, followed immediately by a hot wave of understanding. He was protecting her. Her career. The very thing she’d just bared her soul about. The integrity of the gesture was so purely him that it stole her breath.
She looked at him, at the tension in his jaw, the way he held himself back. A slow, genuine smile spread across her face, fuelled by a sudden, giddy certainty. “Ally.”
“It’s just until your placement ends,” he rushed on, misinterpreting her smile. “It’s only a few more days, and then—”
“Alistair.” Her use of his full name made him stop. She took a small step forward, closing the distance he’d created. The drizzle beaded on his shoulders. “My final assessment was last week. The trauma scenario? I passed. Obviously.”
He blinked. “What?”
“I got the official email this morning. Before I met you.” She bit her lip, the giddiness bubbling over into a soft laugh. “So now that you've finished your placement you won't be working with us."
He stared, processing.
"No," Roz laughed, the sound bright in the damp close. "I've officially joined the SRU medical team. Part-time, but still. I’m staff."
The meaning crashed over his features, washing away the frustrated restraint. His eyes widened, then darkened with a new, unfettered intensity. "So that means..."
"It means," she whispered, her heart hammering against her ribs, "that I can kiss you without you getting struck off."
For a second, he was utterly still. Then a low, relieved sound escaped him. His hands came out of his pockets, framing her face, his touch suddenly sure and demanding. He didn’t kiss her. Not yet. He just held her gaze, his breathing uneven. "Are you sure?"
In answer, she rose onto her toes, closing the last inch between them.
The kiss wasn't gentle or tentative. It was a release. It was the culmination of weeks of stolen glances in the treatment room, of a charged collision in a dark club, of hot chocolate and confessed sorrows under a rainy sky. His mouth was warm and insistent, and she met him with a certainty that surprised them both. Her hands found the front of his jacket, gripping the waxed cotton to anchor herself.
He tasted of rain and cheap marshmallow and something uniquely, essentially Ally. One of his hands slid from her cheek into her damp hair, the other settling firmly on the small of her back, pulling her flush against him. The careful control he wore on the pitch, in interviews, was gone. Here, in this dim close, he was just a man kissing a woman he truly wanted, and the raw honesty of it was devastating.
They broke apart, breathing raggedly, foreheads pressed together. "Wow," he breathed, the word a puff of warm air against her lips.
"Yeah," she managed, her fingers still twisted in his jacket.
He kissed her again, softer this time, a slow, thorough exploration that made her knees weaken. When he finally pulled back, his smile was brilliant and unguarded. "So. Official staff, eh?"
"Official," she confirmed, her own smile feeling like it would split her face.
"Right." He kissed the corner of her mouth, then her jaw. "In that case, Doctor Roz... will you have dinner with me? Tomorrow? A proper date. No rain, no teammates, no medical charts."
She laughed, the sound muffled against his shoulder as he held her close. "I have a cadaver lab until seven."
"Eight o'clock," he said, undeterred. "I'll book somewhere. Somewhere quiet. Where we can talk."
"Or not talk," she suggested, her voice sly.
He chuckled, a deep, warm vibration she felt through his chest. "Or not talk." He reluctantly let her go, his hands sliding down her arms to capture her hands. "I have to go. Really. Morning training is a hellscape."
"Go," she said, giving him a gentle push. "Don't let Coach have your guts."
He walked backwards, not wanting to look away. "Tomorrow. Eight. I'll text you the place."
She nodded, leaning against the cold stone of the close. She watched him until he turned the corner, a swift, purposeful stride carrying him away into the Edinburgh night. The drizzle continued, but she didn't feel it. She felt the phantom pressure of his lips on hers, the solid warmth of his hands. The quiet of the street was no longer just empty space; it was humming with possibility, with a future that had just clicked decisively into place.
She fumbled for her keys, her fingers unsteady. As she climbed the stairs to her flat, she replayed the moment his restraint shattered. That look in his eyes. She’d seen his scans, knew the precise architecture of his knee, the density of his bone. But this was a different kind of anatomy, a map of want and permission they had just begun to navigate.
Inside, she dropped her bag and went to the window. The street below was empty. She touched her lips, still feeling the shape of his smile there. Friday’s assessment was done. The Italy match loomed for him. But tomorrow was theirs. A beginning, with the rules finally rewritten.
The high from the kiss lasted exactly thirty-seven hours, carried her through a double shift at the infirmary and the grim, fluorescent choreography of the cadaver lab. It evaporated at 8:03 AM on Monday outside the Sandyford Centre, replaced by a cold, slick fear that had nothing to do with anatomy.
CAMHS. Child and Adolescent Mental Health. The building was a bland, modern block, all glass and beige brick. No roaring crowds, no smell of deep heat and mud. Just the faint, antiseptic scent of anxiety and industrial cleaner. Her SRU placement had been about broken bodies, clear diagnoses, tangible fixes. This was a different kind of fracture entirely.
A text from Ally buzzed in her pocket. First day. You’ll be brilliant. Remember, you see the cracks. She smiled, but it felt thin. What did she know about mending minds? She could barely navigate her own.
Her supervisor, Dr. Sharma, was a woman with kind eyes and a voice that never rose above a calm, measured tone. “We are not here to fix,” she said in their brief introductory meeting. “We are here to witness, to validate, to equip. You are a student. Your primary job is to listen.” Roz nodded, her stomach knotting. Listening felt like an abyss.
Her first observational session was with a fourteen-year-old girl named Lily who hadn’t spoken at school in six months. The girl sat curled in an armchair, picking at the skin around her thumbnail. Her mother did all the talking, a frantic torrent of worry about deadlines and educational psychologists. Roz watched Lily’s face. She saw the minute flinch at the word ‘defiant,’ the way her shoulders crept toward her ears. She saw, with sudden clarity, not a broken thing, but a fortress.
It was exhausting in a way rugby medicine never was. The silence here was a weight. The injuries were invisible, layered, speaking a language she was only starting to decipher. During a lull, she found herself in the staff kitchen, staring blankly at a steaming mug.
“First day?” A voice beside her. It belonged to a man, maybe late twenties, leaning against the counter. He had messy brown hair and wore a slightly rumpled corduroy jacket over a band t-shirt for some indie group she didn’t know. “You have that ‘I’ve been psychologically sandblasted’ look.”
Roz let out a startled laugh. “Is it that obvious?”
“Only to us veterans of the soul,” he said, grinning. He poured his own coffee. “Leo. I’m one of the family therapists. You’re the new medical student, right? Roz?”
“That’s me.” She took him in. He moved with a loose-limbed ease that was the opposite of Ally’s athletic precision. “It’s… intense.”
“It’s a different kind of contact sport,” he said, his eyes sharp but friendly. “No try lines here. Just tiny, hard-won inches of ground. You’ll get used to the pace.” He sipped his coffee. “Heard you were with the rugby lot before this. Quite the gear change.”
“From concussions to… this.” She gestured vaguely, encompassing the quiet trauma of the building.
“From the physics of injury to the metaphysics,” Leo said, nodding. “Both matter. You’ll be alright. You watch. I saw you in with Lily and her mum. You weren’t just waiting to talk.”
His observation, so similar to Ally’s yet from a completely different angle, unsettled her. It felt like being seen in a new light. “Thanks,” she said, and meant it.
The week unspooled, a strange, new rhythm. Days were spent in quiet rooms, learning the lexicon of self-harm and eating disorders, of anxiety that manifested as silence or rage. Evenings were texts with Ally, full of rugby jargon and his own pre-match tension, a world away. She felt stretched between two planets, each with its own gravity.
Friday night, she was drained. Ally was in Rome for the Italy match. Her flat was too quiet. She thought about Leo’s comment about metaphysics, about the engine of her own perfectionism now idling in this nebulous field. She missed the certainty of a sprain, the clear protocol of a wound.
The buzz of her intercom jarred the silence. She wasn’t expecting anyone. Padding to the speaker, she pressed the button. “Hello?”
A familiar, cheerful voice crackled back. “Delivery for the good doctor! Well, a ‘come down and look at this’ really.” It was Leo.
Frowning, she pulled on a hoodie and went downstairs. He was standing in the close entrance, hands in his corduroy pockets, but he wasn’t looking at her. He was looking down.
Sitting regally on the worn mat in front of her door was a large, ginger cat. It had one tattered ear and eyes the colour of old amber. It stared at them with an air of profound ownership.
“He was just sitting here,” Leo said, his voice softer now. “Like he was waiting for the 37 bus. I was visiting a client in the next close, saw you come in earlier. Thought I’d say hi, found this gentleman holding court.”
Roz crouched down, slowly extending a hand. The cat sniffed her fingers, then pushed its broad head against her knuckles. A rusty purr rumbled through the quiet close.
“He’s friendly,” she whispered.
“Seems to have picked his spot,” Leo said. He crouched beside her, close enough that she could smell the faint scent of coffee and laundry detergent on his jacket. They watched the cat for a moment in comfortable silence, the shared, simple discovery a balm after the week’s weight.
Then Leo straightened. “Right. Well. I’ll leave you to your new guardian.” He smiled at her, a warm, uncomplicated thing. “Have a good weekend, Roz. Don’t let the metaphysics get you down.”
He turned to go, then paused, as if remembering something. He stepped back towards her, closing the small distance in the dim hallway. His movement was casual, instinctive. He leaned in and kissed her.
It wasn’t like Ally’s kiss. There was no storm of released tension, no weeks of built-up charge. It was soft, brief, a dry, friendly press of lips against the corner of her mouth, over almost before her brain registered it. A platonic punctuation mark to a weird little moment.
“See you Monday,” he said, as if he’d just patted her shoulder, and then he was gone, the close door swinging shut behind him.
Roz remained crouched, frozen. The cat butted her hand again. The ghost of the kiss, so offhand, so utterly without the seismic weight of Ally’s, tingled on her skin. It meant nothing. It meant everything. It was a data point from a new world, a world where the rules were unwritten, where a cat could appear, and a colleague could kiss you goodbye without it shattering the universe.
But as she scooped the purring ginger cat into her arms, feeling its solid, warm weight settle against her chest, she felt a fissure open deep inside. A simple, terrifying question echoed in the new silence.
Which universe was she in now?